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Character Names

There are many resources on the internet regarding character names, but I am not going to cover those in this post. This post is simply my personal process of how I name the characters in my stories.

Typically, I try to stick to an alphabetic list. It doesn’t require me to give characters names in alphabetic order, but I use it as a way to help me give characters different names and not work in clusters. For each story, I will list out the alphabet and take away the letters as I use them. This is my standard across all stories and is independent of genre or other naming conventions.

Naming conventions, for me, consist of how the culture in the story uses names. The novel I am currently working on uses a couple of conventions. One of the conventions applies both to class and a symbiotic relationship. For this society, there is a low-class of bio-engineered humans that serve a particular purpose. They are called syphons and every syphon has ‘valli’ in lower case attached to the end of their name. For example, one of the two main characters is named Grevalli. This class never has a name that is not attached to ‘valli.’ So in my example, Grevalli never has the name of Gre.

The second naming convention is based off of the first convention. It applies to the symbiotic relationship where a human is trained to assist the syphon and protect them from harmful outside influences. They are labeled anchors and when they graduate from training, they have Nish added to their last/family name. The other main character in the story is named ZonaNish. His family name is Zona and he has that name all of his life. Upon graduation, he has the honor of adding Nish and becomes officially known as ZonaNish. His first/familiar name is rarely used except for family or if he takes a lover and it is used in an intimate setting only.